Archdiocese of Boston is packing its bags for Braintree this week

Jon Chesto

Wednesday

Jun 25, 2008 at 12:01 AMJun 25, 2008 at 7:07 PM

The Archdiocese of Boston is preparing to move nearly 300 jobs from its Brighton headquarters and a few other locations to a modern office building in Braintree near the Randolph border this week. The archdiocese plans to open its new Pastoral Center for business next Monday, replacing its Brighton chancery, which will close on Friday.

The Archdiocese of Boston is preparing to move nearly 300 jobs from its Brighton headquarters and a few other locations to a modern office building in Braintree near the Randolph border this week. The archdiocese plans to open its new Pastoral Center for business next Monday, replacing its Brighton chancery, which will close on Friday.

The move was made possible by Tom Flatley, the local developer who died last month. Flatley, a major benefactor for the church, gave the nearly 160,000-square-foot building at 66 Brooks Drive to the archdiocese late last year for a nominal amount.

Boston Financial Data Services previously occupied the building. The Quincy-based company has since moved those employees to an office in Canton.

Rev. Richard Erikson, the archdiocese’s vicar general, said the building provides ample meeting and training rooms with audiovisual equipment and technology for teleconferencing. He said it will also be helpful to have more of the archdiocese’s employees working under the same roof.

“This is a considerable upgrade for us,” Erikson said. “We are moving basically half a dozen locations scattered over many miles in some pretty old buildings that aren’t equipped the way we need them to be equipped to a beautiful center ... that will be better equipped to help us better meet our mission.”

Erikson said the archdiocese has overseen some renovations to the building, but there’s more work to be done. He expects that a chapel there can be opened to the community by sometime in the fall.

The operations that are moving to Braintree include the Cardinal’s office, the Catholic schools office, parish services, the archdiocese’s tribunal, the organization’s financial staff and other leadership offices. The Pilot, the archdiocese’s newspaper, will also make the move.

Erikson said the consolidation will allow the archdiocese to reduce its lease costs. The archdiocese is also reaping $65 million after reaching a deal last year to sell the chancery property to Boston College.

The conversion of the Braintree property to nonprofit ownership means that it has been taken off the tax rolls, at a cost of nearly $300,000 a year in lost taxes to the town of Braintree. Peter Morin, chief of staff for Braintree Mayor Joe Sullivan, said he hopes the move will be “economically neutral” for the town, given the jobs that will be moving to the site.

Peter Forman, the CEO of the South Shore Chamber of Commerce, said the move benefits the South Shore because of the new jobs and the prestige of having another prominent organization headquartered here.

“It’s about ... more job opportunities for people living on the South Shore, and more people going to local businesses, restaurants, coffee shops,” Forman said. “It’s a great situation for us.”

Ed McDaid, president of South Shore Staffing in Canton, said he sees a major gain for the region, despite the loss of property tax revenue in Braintree. McDaid said there are many ripple effects when an organization the size of the archdiocese – which reported more than $341 million in revenues in its 2006 fiscal year – decides to locate its headquarters in the region.

“It’s a big win for the South Shore,” said McDaid, whose firm is providing some job placement services for the archdiocese. “Here you have an extremely well-established, longstanding nonprofit basically laying down their roots on the South Shore. They’re going to be a very significant player in terms of the overall economy.”

Jon Chesto may be reached at jchesto@ledger.com.

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